Issue, Find a Full List of Distribution Points for Hard Copies Or Arrange a Subscription to Have the Nanjinger Delivered to Your Home Or Office!
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
MAY 2021 www.thenanjinger.com 6 Sign of the Times hat it’s been more than a year since our 1. How have you felt lately (like over the last outing in “The Trip” is indeed a sign past year); anxious or guilty? See p. 16-18. Tof these days. 2. Should you bother to keep pace in the But we’re back with a vengeance. And we’ll Chinese race to be ever-more “beautiful”? wager that you too will be hunkering for the See p. 10-12. clean air of Chizhou and the splendour of 3. Taken out a gym membership recently? Jiuhua Shan after you’re read our first travel Notice anything strange? See p. 14-15. piece of 2021. See p. 22-23. Welcome to “Zeitgeist” from The Nanjinger. But before that, a few questions to get us started for this month. Ed. can the QR Code to visit The Nanjinger on WeChat, from where Syou can download a free PDF of this issue, find a full list of distribution points for hard copies or arrange a subscription to have The Nanjinger delivered to your home or office! This magazine is part of a family of English publications that together reach a large proportion of the foreign population living in Nanjing, along with a good dash of locals, comprising: The Nanjinger City Guide www.thenanjinger.com Facebook, WeChat, Twitter & Instagram All of the above are owned and operated by HeFu Media, the Chinese subsidiary of SinoConnexion Ltd;www.sinoconnexion.com 2 By Maitiu Bralligan ‘21 Independently, we each rebelled in such similar ways: Black clothes, long hair, earring in the left ear Listening to the same riffs and the same bars “And now you do what they told ya...” We were free! Casting our fearless bodies Into the mosh pit / wrecking pool (call it what you will) In the thrall of the same intoxicating thrill. “Here we are now, entertain us...” And each new high priest of the festival called us To rock and to roll, tripping off the call And response - to which, united, we bawled. “...and burn through the witches...” Never once did we consider that we might Be merely conforming to a new wave of thought Dressed in borrowed clothes, subliminally taught “Hey you, what do ya see?/Something beautiful or something free?” Our un-enlightened parents tutted utter disapproval As they wondered where they went so wrong To have such reckless rejection laid spawn. Answers “For whom the bell tolls/Time marches on...” 1. “Killing in the Name”; Rage Against the Machine; 1992 2. “Entertain Us”; Nirvana; 1991 Now looking back at the bangles and Mary chains, 3. “Dragula”; Rob Zombie; 1998 4. “Beautiful People”; Marilyn Manson; 1996 I squint at my son, with his tats and swag, 5. “For whom the Bell Tolls”; Metallica; 1984 His ripped jeans jacket and American flag 6. “Alright”; Kendrick Lamar; 2015 “And we hate po-po/ Wanna kill us dead in the streets fo sho'...” 7. “Purple Haze”; Jimi Hendrix Experience; 1967 8. “The Man who Sold the World”; David Bowie; 1970 (also See him roll innocent blue eyes and groan covered by Nirvana; 1995) as he wonders why it took his world so long To foster such unfettered understanding- “Purple haze all in my brain, lately things don’t seem the same...” And I ask: if any of us here ever was inspired By an independent thought, born of his own mind And not of the unseen architects of time. “We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when…” I play my turn and tut my disapproval... 9 LIVING IN A ONE-SIDED WORLD OF BEAUTY I am who and what I am “Your eyes aren’t big enough.” “Your nose bridge isn’t high enough.” “You are flat.” …the phrases repeated to me over and over again growing up in a mostly western- dominated culture. By Ada Sun 10 grew up in America, spending the majority of because a part of me believed that it would my tween and early teen years in a school make me feel complete, better help me Iwhere the primary ethnicity was Caucasian. morph into being one with western culture, When you are a kid, you just want to fit in with all creating an illusion to everyone around me of your friends, something as simple as that. But that I wasn’t all that different compared to that is not as easy to achieve as you would think. everyone else. I was in third grade when I came to the brutal Despite my best efforts, I was still perceived as realisation that I looked, dressed and acted an outsider by my friends, who judged the way I completely differently from every single one of my looked and spoke with subtle actions, such as peers. I had just moved to the US from China. I exchanging uncomfortable eye contact or the noticed everyone around me had light-coloured occasional side glance whenever my accent hair, button noses and huge concave eyes. slipped through. Though these actions were small, overtime they built up and slowly chipped I hated how my hair colour was away at my confidence. so dark, I hated how my eyes I even went as far as to get on weren’t big enough, I hated how both knees and begging my my nose wasn’t petite and high mom to let me get a nose job enough, I hated how I just and double eyelid surgery. simply wasn’t enough. She firmly refused, as she couldn’t comprehend I remember staring into my bathroom mirror why I so desperately wanted to change my every day hoping that something has changed appearance that she called beautiful. But it’s and that my Asian features had magically only human nature to want feelings of transformed into Caucasian ones, though, that acceptance and attractiveness. never happened, not even in my wildest dreams. I resented my Asian background and After spending years feeling ridiculous and how it made me so vastly different from isolated, demented in an all-consuming everyone else. mindset, I realised that I was not the only one who thought this. Looking at Eastern Asian My initial point of action was that if I couldn’t culture today, almost everything is influenced look like those girls, then I could dress, speak and subjugated by western-beauty standards; and act like them. I tossed away myAsian whether they be fair skin, double eyelids or a heritage almost completely, refusing to speak dainty nose, the Asian societal beauty spectrum Chinese at home, and put on a façade, hoping to embodies them all. that no one would realise that I was different. Western culture and beauty standards started The concept of fair skin has long been popular to dominate who I fundamentally was, affecting among the Chinese, Korean and Japanese. A everything I did, from what I wore to how I World Health Organisation survey found over 40 presented myself through body language and percent of women in Asia said that they the way I spoke. regularly used skin-whitening cream. I used to spend hours correcting my accent and Therein, western colonialism trying incredibly hard in an attempt to sound more like the stereotypical “valley girl” presented in the plays an enormous role in the countless teen romcoms I’ve binged. Even though popularity of whitening products. I changed essentially everything about myself that An Estee Lauder representative has pointed out made me Chinese, except for the way I looked, I that the product labeled as whitening cream in still never felt satiated. Asia are in the US described as “illuminating When I reached middle school, I only cream”. Whatever is considered as more affiliated myself with Caucasian people, Caucasian is portrayed as beautiful. In Japan, 11 the popular practice of skin bleaching is popular I remember a few years back discovering an old among many, in order to achieve a lighter photo album of my grandma, when she was in appearance. Despite the many health risks, her early 20s. I saw how beautifully she smiled including liver and nerve damage that can come with a sense of pride; fierceness that radiated along with skin bleaching, this goes to show just confidence and self-acceptance. I wanted that, I how extreme some are willing to go to achieve wanted to feel just as proud of myself and my the perceived western phenomenon of fair skin. culture as she was. And it’s not just whitening creams; plastic surgery By things as simple as a is another insanely popular practice adopted by over 20 million people in Asia. South Korea photograph and watching produces some of the highest rates of plastic YouTube videos of influencers surgery in the world, with the most sought-after who looked like me, I could now operations being double eyelid surgery and nose jobs. view myself as beautiful. My The country performs the narrow scope of beauty had most cosmetic been widened. surgeries per capita, with 20 plastic I am still learning to procedures per 1,000 further embrace my people, compared to 13 Asian features and in the US. myself forwho I truly am, but I can feel something This idolised and warped within me that has perception of Caucasian changed from before. I beauty standards has feel a newfound dominated the entire beauty confidence that I’ve industry, pressurising women to rarely experienced and I conform to a race-specific, finally feel comfortable in stereotypical beauty that my own skin.